Private Investigator Jobs

Private investigators and detectives perform a variety of private investigator jobs. They may carry out jobs that involve locating a missing person or tracking a cheating wife or husband. Lawyers, businessmen, and private citizens with financial, legal, or personal problems often hire investigators.

Private investigators use the latest surveillance techniques and high tech equipment. Much of their fact finding involves traveling around to inspect locations and interview people.

One common aspect of PI jobs is surveillance. Private investigators find a strategic location from which to observe locations or people in order to discover actions or evidence regarding their clients’ cases. If they see any helpful evidence, they will take pictures of what they see.

Another common aspect of the job is conducting information searches, often on the Internet. Private investigators learn about what resources are available on the Internet and how to use them to quickly locate and verify the information they need. Among the information available to private investigators online are vehicle registration, telephone numbers, club memberships, criminal records, and many municipal public records.

The difficulty of individual jobs depends on how much of the work is research and how much of the work is action. The information jobs are usually pretty easy for an investigator who has been taught the tools of the trade. Even most of the action jobs are pretty easy, involving surveillance of a cheating wife or husband. However, some private investigator jobs are risky, such as finding a thief or a criminal. Self-employed private investigators can choose which cases to accept, but how much money they make is, to some extent, dependent on the risks and difficulties involved in every job they take.

How to become a private investigator

Most private investigator jobs are performed by self-employed private investigators. In order to get private investigator jobs, you must first have a private investigator license. To get this license, you must first attend a private investigator school and complete a private investigation course or training program. A local school course typically lasts from one to three months and can cost up to $500. Alternatively, you can take an online course for around $300. When you consider that the average earning on a surveillance job is around $50 per hour, the cost of getting into the private investigation industry is small.